Years of careful preparation preceded the attack in mid-September.
The preparation of the Israeli tweet attack against Hezbollah agents was almost nine years in the making, according to an exclusive report by The Washington Post. The paper published unprecedented information about the beepers and walkie-talkies used in the September attacks against Hezbollah. According to the report, wiretapping of the walkie-talkies used in the September 17 attack began in Lebanon as early as 2015.
The pagers used in the first wave of attacks were manufactured in Israel in 2022 and inserted into Apollo's supply line without the company's knowledge, the report said.
Hezbollah operatives purchased 5,000 after a reseller successfully convinced the group that they were impervious to Israeli surveillance.
"He was the one who contacted Hezbollah and explained to them why the bigger beeper with the bigger battery was better than the original model," an Israeli official familiar with the details of the operation told The Washington Post.
Hezbollah began distributing the tweets in February, but some were distributed even the day before the attack.
Some of the radios used in the second wave of the attack had been in Lebanon for nearly a decade. The batteries of the transceivers were filled with a highly explosive compound known as PETN and monitoring devices.
For nine years, Israeli intelligence had used the radios to eavesdrop on Hezbollah operations, waiting to use them in a future emergency. As the escalation in northern Israel escalated, there were increasing fears that Hezbollah would discover the action.
According to the Washington Post, senior Israeli security officials did not learn of the plan until days before it was implemented.
Officials decided to carry out the top-secret plan while aware of the risk of expanding the conflict north.
After that, members of Hezbollah received a message on Twitter that they had received an encrypted message. To open it, you had to press two buttons on the device at the same time - this ensured that both hands of the beeper's owner would be damaged, ensuring maximum damage.
Cover image: The site of one of the "beep" explosions
Source: X/Hezbollah
